Colleagues,



On August 31 I presented this question to the List:





QUESTION:  Is it customary and appropriate for a vendor to charge for a Certificate of Destruction and, if so, what is the appropriate fee?



BACKGROUND:  To resolve a legal matter, Harris County has entered into an agreement with a private firm to provide us with $20,000 of destruction services, primarily for non-paper information media but also for sensitive property such as law enforcement uniforms.  The company does not have a fee schedule nor has the court provided me, the project manager, guidance to determine if charges are reasonable.



The first Invoice/Statement of Services includes an $85 charge for the Certificate of Destruction.  (Normally the Certificate will include photographs of the material being destroyed although we waived that requirement this time as it was a witnessed destruction.)



I want to be fair with the vendor, but it is my responsibility to ensure that the County gets full value for accepting the agreement.  So, before I approve or challenge this charge, I ask my fellow List Servers for their counsel and advice.



Eleven persons responded, either to the List or privately.  No one had ever seen such a charge although some opined that we might be stuck with it because there was no agreement to prevent it.  Others suggested that it might be to cover the photography charges, although there were none on this certificate.  (And then there was Bill Roach's comment about photographs being attached to Birth Certificates!)



The person most knowledgeable about secured destructions (of products as well as information) confirmed that the industry practice is NOT to charge for Certificates of Destruction as they are produced as a matter of course.  BUT an exception might be made when there are special requirements, such as listing individual items.  For instance, if a client having hard drives destroyed required the certificate to include the serial number of each hard drive, a special charge would be warranted.



He also informed me that destruction companies do not like to charge by weight because of the possibilities and consequences of inaccuracies.  They prefer to charge by the container-box, bin, truck, etc.  And then they prefer to see the product before agreeing on a price as truckload of product wrappers would weigh a lot more than a truckload of dolls.



Based upon the collective recommendations, I contacted the vendor and asked that he explain and justify the $85 charge for the Certificate of Destruction as it was neither normal nor customary.  His response was that was a customary charge to costs of creating and storing the destruction documentation.  My response was since that was not a normal charge in the information destruction business I would not approve it unless he could show me invoices where other customers had accepted it.  I told him that he could redact any sensitive information.  He said that he would see if he could find any invoices that he was willing to share.  In the end he submitted a revised invoice/statement without the charge for the Certificate of Destruction.  I accepted the revised statement.



Thank you for your assistance.  I, for one, have learned something.



Paul



Paul R. Scott, CA, CRM

Records Management Officer

Harris County, TX

713 368-0039

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